Jaws influenced Stranger Things

The Duffer brothers have said Chief Hopper was modelled on Roy Scheider's Chief Brody: a small-town police chief who has come there to get away from something, is not taken seriously, and turns out to be the one who sees the threat for what it is. The show's early pitch was a Spielberg-style monster in an ordinary town, and Jaws is the purest version of that.